He wasn’t even required to fight the terrorists who had overrun Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel during the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
When the deputy company officer in the Israel Defense Forces commando unit told Lt. Jonathan Gutin that he did not expect him to take part since he didn’t have their training, the 20-year-old liaison officer newly assigned to the multidimensional unit had none of it.
“I’m with you all the way, brother,” he replied.
That morning, hundreds of Palestinian Arab terrorists had overrun the kibbutz on the border with the Gaza Strip, murdering nearly 10% of its residents while abducting scores of others, and now the small force that had rushed to the scene in the late afternoon was fighting back.
“His answer exemplified his composure, which was so typical of him,” his direct commander, 28-year-old Capt. Y, of Tel Aviv, recounted on Tuesday. “He did everything with an internal quiet, which testifies to his greatness.”
Gutin was killed in the battle at Kibbutz Be’eri, one of 19 IDF soldiers who fell in combat at the community.
‘Something planned by himself’
It was several years earlier, when Gutin was a senior in high school in the central Israeli city of Modi’in, where he focused on architecture, that he worked on a school project creating a home for lone soldiers in his hometown. The Israeli-born son of Russian immigrants, Gutin, who was an award-winning judoka in his youth, had a special place in his heart for soldiers who were serving in the IDF when their families lived abroad, even before he enlisted.
Now, his parents, who immigrated to Israel a quarter century ago, and his Israeli comrades in arms are turning his vision into a reality.
“The issue of aliyah and Zionism was very important to him,” said his mother, Ella Gutin, noting that her mother was a Holocaust survivor. His father, Alexei Gutin, serves in the Jerusalem police force.
Last year, the family launched a nonprofit aptly named ‘I’m with you all the way’ in Hebrew to create a home for lone soldiers in Modi’in, which they plan to open in a rented house by the end of the summer following a fundraising launch next week. They hope to raise about $250,000 for the first three years of its operation.
“This is something Jonathan actually planned by himself and wanted to dedicate to lone soldiers,” said Alexei Gutin.
‘A deep motivation to work’
It was less than two months before the Oct. 7 massacre that Gutin was assigned to the special commando unit after undergoing officers’ training, determined to enter a combat unit despite an injury.
On the morning of the attack, most of his unit was at home ahead of a major operation they had been training for when the massacre broke out. He and his officers were rushed back to their base on an emergency call-up that fateful weekend. He was among the first to arrive at the base, his commander said.
“From my first meeting with him, I saw that he was top quality and someone with a deep motivation to work,” recalled Maj. Y., 27, of Elad, the deputy battalion commander in the unit. “I saw someone who did everything at the highest level.”
As they entered Be’eri to assist a force of IDF paratroopers, the commanding officer told Gutin that as a liaison officer from the communications corps, he did not have to join the fight, only to be rebuffed.
Later that afternoon, word spread in the unit, who were dispersed in various places in the south battling the invading terrorists, that Gutin was killed in the battle, as was the head of the unit, Col. Roi Levy, 44, in the nearby community of Re’im.
“At the very moment, it is hard to believe. You want to believe in your heart that maybe it is just a rumor or the chaos of war and that a little bit later, evening will come, and we will meet up and laugh about it together,” he said.
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